[pulseaudio-discuss] A pulseaudio appliance

[David Kågedal]

"Jon Smirl" <jonsmirl at gmail.com> writes:

> On 10/3/07, Matthieu Baechler <matthieu.baechler at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10/3/07, Jon Smirl <jonsmirl at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On 10/3/07, Matthieu Baechler <matthieu.baechler at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Hi,
>> > >
>> > > I'm currently looking for an appliance that would offer the same
>> > > feature as AirTunes from Apple, but obviously, using free software,
>> > > and thus pulseaudio.
>> > >
>> > > Does any one have some links pointing to such hardware ?
>> > >
>> > > It has to :
>> > >
>> > > 1/ be small
>> > > 2/ be pretty (as in "it must be accepted by my wife")
>> > > 3/ be power efficient (less than ~10W, ~1W in standby)
>> > > 4/ be silent (no moving part)
>> >
>> > Use a NSLU2 and plug in USB devices for 802.11G and USB audio
>>
>> I already considered this solution, but unfortunately it doesn't
>> really match the esthetics requirements (from my wife point's of
>> view).
>
> I work in this are and there isn't really anything else but a Sonos.
> Sonos is Linux based, expensive, and they have only partially released
> the source. You can't really modify it.
>
> NSLU2 is best choice. Just hide it behind something. It is quite
> small, size of a paperback novel. I use one to drive my multi-room
> audio system. It has five USB audio dongles attached and a 500GB disk.
> It runs five copies of mpd. I control it over 802.11G using a Nokia
> N800.

That's still not within spec.  He wanted something to stream audio
data to.  The mpd solution requires you to have the audio data on the
disk connected to the NSLU, correct.  I guess you could read it over
the network, but it's not the same thing as having a remote sound card
for your laptop.

-- 
David Kågedal